The present invention is concerned with taco shell manufacturing machine equipment which usually includes a step of ageing hot baked tortillas by first cooling in ambient air and then stacking for moisture equilibrating at ambient temperature together undesirably demanding a period of time of about one to two hours, appreciable extra manual labor, undesirable occupation of considerable extra factory area and objectionable excessive handling.
Prior to the present invention the most sophisticated manufacturing equipment devised to supplement the usual preparation of making disk tortillas from masa dough, prepared from ground and cooked corn, included suitable baking oven structure and transport means to pass the tortillas through while baking, equipment to move the baked tortillas through the ambient atmosphere for cooling, stacking the cooled tortillas for an hour or more to effect moisture equilibriation, and then unstacking them and placing them on feed-in equipment successively to transport them through frying apparatus to fold them into tacos and fry them while being advanced through hot fat. The frying apparatus may be of the general type of that disclosed and claimed in the Stickle U.S. Pat. No. 3,785,273 of Jan. 15, 1974, which is limited to certain frying equipment without reference to any particular means for feeding tortillas thereto or receiving fried tacos therefrom. Since such a specific frying equipment, or variant thereof, is not claimed herein alone or as a critical unit of the certain assembly combination proposed in the present disclosure it has no pertinency to the subject matter defined in the present claims.
A general object of the present invention is to provide in succeeding and cooperative association a tortillas baking oven, a tempering steamer, a combined tortillas folder and deep fat fryer, and a timing transfer mechanism between the steamer and fryer, which in part are unique and reliably operative to produce with unusual rapidity and much fewer hand operations the production of fried tacos while eliminating much of the discard wastage heretofore accepted as inevitable.
A more specific object of the invention is to provide in such an assemblage a unique tortillas tempering mechanism which continuously processes therethrough baked tortillas while effectively tempering them in a relatively short time, such as of the order of a few seconds to a few minutes, without manual handling and delivers these effectively tempered tortillas in orderly and desirably continuous fashion to a deep fat fryer for automatic processing therethrough to produce successively desired taco shells.
Another object of the invention is to provide an easily performed and reliable process of making the fried taco shells by laterally passing in a period of a few minutes masa dough disk tortillas into and through an elongated steam tempering chamber which, at relatively low steam pressure, reliably tempers them during their relatively rapid transit therethrough to attain effectively a desired equilibration of the moisture in these tortillas so that upon immediately following passage thereof through the folding and deep fat frying equipment fried tacos of excellent quality are reliably delivered.
The taco shell manufacturing equipment of the present invention successively receives from suitable means series of baked disk tortillas and delivers them to means to equilibrate moisture completely through them in a relatively short tempering time of the general order of about a few seconds to a few minutes. This is accomplished by passing them in longitudinally-spaced groups of substantially transversely aligned disks continuously and successively through an elongated lateral steam chamber upon traveling lateral open web belting means as received from the baking means and while being subjected in this chamber to relatively low pressure steam until discharged by the belting through an exit end opening of this chamber as tempered tortillas. Driven lateral transfer means receive the tempered tortillas in such longitudinally-spaced transverse groups from the exit end of the steam chamber and transports them laterally forward to the entrance end of tortillas folding and frying apparatus. There are provided means for transporting the tortillas in lap-folded form through a hot fat bath in the frying apparatus, and means delivering the fried tortillas as lap-folded taco shells from this frying apparatus to means for packing them for ultimate marketing. Such taco shell manufacturing equipment includes to advantage driving means for the frying apparatus transporting means and, in association therewith, means for adjusting during operation the relative speeds of such fryer driving means and driving means for a lateral transfer belting run which feeds the former whereby the tempered tortillas are delivered to the fryer transporting means in properly timed relation.
Such taco shell manufacturing equipment is characterized by lateral transfer means intervening the exit end of the steam tempering chamber and the entrance end of the tortillas folding and frying apparatus which comprises a lateral run of an open web transfer belting means and means driving this transfer belting run at certain linear speed that assures delivery thereby of successive transversely-aligned groups of steam-tempered flat tortillas to folding means carried by the tortillas-transporting means of this frying apparatus in properly timed relation whereby the flat tortillas in each transversely-aligned group are lap-folded transversely against longitudinally-spaced, transversely-extending, ridge-shaped open web forms and substantially diametrically. Consequently, the lap-folded tortillas, are fried into U-shaped taco shells as they are transported through the hot bath of the fryer for delivery therefrom.
The preferred process of making fried taco shells in accordance with the present invention and which is advantageously performed by the preferred equipment taught herein, as well as by equivalent machine combinations within the scope of the present invention, includes passing spaced rows of disk tortillas through the steam chamber by equipment in the form of a top lateral run of an endless open web belting with relatively low pressure steam thoroughly contacting the top and bottom faces of the disk tortillas supported on this run; and submitting the traveling tortillas on this belting run to tempering action by relatively low pressure steam, which may be of the order of about 15 psi, during this passing time period which is perferably about ten seconds (10 sec.).